You Can’t Be Serious(66)

Now it was Obama’s turn to react, with a curious, shocked, I-too-am-surprised-you’re-that-naive sort of look. Unlike his wife, he seemed very amused. “Man, you applied on change.gov and didn’t tell anyone? Why didn’t you just call me?”

I was understanding the reality of a situation like this: If your boss of more than a year—who you’re on good terms with—suddenly gets a big promotion and you want to keep working for him, he’d expect you to give him the courtesy of telling him that.

Obama motioned for his personal aide, Reggie Love. “You have Reggie’s info, right? You guys have each other’s numbers? Reggie’s going to give you a call this week and we’ll figure out if there’s a good fit somewhere,” he said. I was embarrassed, relieved, and excited. Either the president-elect was better at being polite than I knew, or Mrs. Obama’s reaction was indicative of their belief that as an early organizer and Arts Policy Committee member on the campaign, maybe I could actually be good at something in the White House.



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Three days later, backstage at the staff inaugural ball where I was to make a speech before David Plouffe and Obama, the newly inaugurated president raised the idea of a job. “Hey man, I was thinking about our conversation. How do you feel about working with Organizing for America?” he asked, referring to the nongovernmental advocacy group being formed to keep grassroots supporters marshalled toward political action. It would have been a great way to stay involved, but not what I had applied for on change.gov. “I want to go all-in,” I said to the president. “I want to work directly for you at the White House and help fulfill all those promises we made people.”

In retrospect it was perhaps a bold thing to say. I was flattered that he’d even remembered our chat from the rope line at the inaugural concert enough to have given it any thought. Reggie passed my number along to Chris Lu, the new head of White House Cabinet Affairs, and he reached out to me a few days later. “The boss is excited about the prospect of you joining the staff. It’s good you two spoke,” he said. “In the Office of Public Engagement—OPE—on the outreach team, we’re trying to fill three jobs: We need to find someone to handle outreach to young people, outreach to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and outreach to the arts community. OPE is one of the offices senior advisor Valerie Jarrett is going to oversee. Tina Tchen is heading it up, and apparently you really impressed her at the DNC back in August, so she wants you on her team.”

I hadn’t initially planned on attending the 2008 DNC (Democratic National Convention). I thought my time would be better spent on the road campaigning through the summer. But when my former Iowa boss, Paul Tewes, recruited me to be something called a floor whip, I couldn’t really say no. “The campaign needs a few trusted volunteers to work the floor of the convention,” he said at the time. “One whip will oversee two delegations. Duties include standing, handing out signs with quippy slogans on them timed to convention speakers so that everything looks good on TV, and blocking journalists and other roamers from coming too close to the delegates and disrupting their work.”

The other part of the floor-whip job was to keep an eye out for anyone who might potentially hamper a smooth convention. The primary had been contentious, and the worry was that disgruntled delegates of other candidates might orchestrate some sort of takeover on the (televised) convention floor—causing a potential embarrassment to the nominee (Barack Hussein Obama). Each day I was given a sweet walkie-talkie with an earpiece, and a bright yellow vest to go over my clothes. I was expected to be thoughtful and engaging with the delegates, to quietly spot and report potential trouble, and to be unapologetically tough in dealing with any outliers. Overall, I gathered that floor whips were sort of like political bouncers. Tewes had assigned me to the Illinois and Hawaii delegations—Obama’s home states, and therefore sort of a big deal.

What Chris Lu was telling me now was that Tina, the president’s incoming director of Public Engagement, had been one of those Illinois delegates and that I’d impressed her with my work that week. “So, the President’s Liaison to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Young Americans, and the Arts Community,” he continued, “those are three separate jobs, but we only have the salary to pay for one staffer. Between your campaign experience, your arts background, your graduate program, and your teaching position at UPenn, you have expertise in all three areas, so we thought it might actually be perfect. How do you feel about that?”

“Three jobs?! Yes! Of course!” I didn’t miss a beat. “I’d be honored to.”



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There was only one little problem: I already had a job. A publicly known job with a contract, on the TV show House (which I was enjoying). When I initially applied on change.gov, I hadn’t thought through what would happen if I was actually offered a White House job. So, as I provisionally accepted the offer from Chris, I knew this wasn’t going to be a straightforward process. I couldn’t just ghost on my TV gig.

Even though it was basically Spilo’s fault that I had this job offer, he suddenly had concerns. “Are you sure you want to do this? You’re on a hit television show you’ve worked your whole life to get on. Why don’t you just wait until next season in case the show gets canceled?” But I couldn’t do that. House ran through the following May; it was mid-January and the White House job started immediately. Besides, House was in its fifth season; it wasn’t going to get dropped anytime soon. I knew it and he knew it. So, I asked my manager and agent (not Barbara Cameron, she had retired) to see if they could get me out of my contract.